Climate Adaptation

“In our oceans and rivers, a growing number of fish species are threatened or endangered by the human use of water. Some aquatic ecosystems have been completely destroyed or irreversibly modified by human water withdrawals. For example, the Aral Sea, nestled on the frontier between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was once the fourth-largest inland salt-water body. Today, it is barely a quarter of its size a half century ago—thanks to the massive diversion for Soviet irrigation projects of the vast rivers that once fed it. All 24 species of fish found only in the Aral Sea are now extinct. Likewise, nearly one-third of all North American freshwater fauna populations are considered threatened with extinction, a trend mirrored elsewhere around the world. Water flows in average years no longer reach the deltas of many of the world’s great rivers, including the Nile, Yellow, Amu Darya, and the Colorado, leading to nutrient depletion, loss of habitat for native fisheries, plummeting populations of birds, erosion of shorelines, and adverse effects on local communities.

All of these problems are likely to be made worse by the world’s changing climate, which will have an increasing impact on water resources and the systems we built to manage them. As temperatures rise, the need for water will rise; as precipitation patterns change, water availability will change. Glaciers and snow packs are diminishing, while the frequencies and intensities of storms are more irregular. Meanwhile, water managers are wholly unprepared to meet the demands of a different climate.”

Read “Facing Down the Hydro-Crisis”

Not sure if this is relevant to my readers, but maybe someone knows someone who knows someone that works in Antarctica? 

The “Martha T. Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica” is a US$ 100,000 unrestricted award presented to an individual in the fields of Antarctic science or policy that has demonstrated potential for sustained and significant contributions that will enhance the understanding and/or preservation of Antarctica. The Tinker Foundation’s goal is to establish a prestigious award that recognizes excellence in Antarctic research by honoring someone in the early to mid-stages of their career. The Prize is inspired by Martha T. Muse’s passion for Antarctica and is intended to be a legacy of the International Polar Year 2007-2008.

The prize-winner can be from any country and work in ANY field of Antarctic science or policy, including Climate change, Life Sciences, Geo Sciences, Physical Sciences, Social sciences & Humanities, Antarctic Politics. The goal is to provide recognition of the important work being done by the individual and to call attention to the significance of understanding Antarctica in a time of change. The Prize is awarded by the Tinker Foundation  and administered by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).

Please visit www.museprize.org for further details. Online nominations will close on the 12 April 2012

Is there enough momentum to push sci-journals to go open-source? This petition initiative thinks so. If you’re a researcher and are looking to publish, have a look at “The Cost of Knowledge” and consider boycotting Elsevier. 

science:

Science should be open. If you support that sentiment, this initiative is good news. It is a call for researchers to declare a boycott of Elsevier, one of the largest publishers of scientific journals in the world. Elsevier makes enormous profits off the free labor of scientists all over the world. Scientists do the research, write the papers, do the editing and peer-review, and then the paper gets published by an Elsevier journal, earning the middleman enormous profit. In order to protect its business model, which consists of adding literally nothing worthwhile to science or the general public, Elsevier forces libraries to buy bundles of their journals, rather than just the journals they want or need. At the same time, they make every effort to restrict the free flow of scientific knowledge, supporting laws like SOPA, PIPA, and the Research Works Act, which seeks to prohibit open access mandates to publicly funded research.

The reason this works is that these are prestigious journals that everyone uses. If one researcher refuses to participate, it’s little more than a nuisance to their fellow scientists. If many people announce their unwillingness to participate in this scheme, however, maybe real progress can be made. Elsevier is only part of the problem, but it is probably wise to focus on one specific company to begin with.

Alternatives to the commercial journals—which, again, to emphasize, do not actually make any money for the benefit of scientists or science—already exist. Open access to scientific papers and data will make science more democratic, and likely more efficient as well. It will also benefit the general public. When I write about science on this blog, I try to rely on primary sources, but often, they are behind paywalls, and I can’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars to purchase access to papers only to write a free blog. If science is open access, that means people like you and me don’t need to rely on people affiliated with research institutions or with sufficient economic means to interpret science for us. We can do it ourselves.

“The government’s colorful map of planting zones is being updated for a warmer 21st century.The official guide for 80 million gardeners and a staple on seed packets reflects a new reality: The coldest day of the year isn’t as cold as it used to be. So some plants that once seemed too vulnerable to cold can now survive farther north.

It’s the first time since 1990 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has updated the map and much has changed. Nearly entire states, such as Ohio, Nebraska and Texas, are in warmer zones.

The new guide, unveiled Wednesday at the National Arboretum, also uses better weather data and offers more interactive technology.

“It truly does reflect state of the art,” said USDA chief scientist Catherine Woteki.

Gardeners can register their zip code into the online map and their zone will pop up. It shows the exact average coldest temperature for each of the 26 zones, even though zones are based on five degree increments.

For example, Des Moines, Iowa, used to be in zone 5a, meaning the lowest temperature on average was between minus 15 and minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Now it’s 5b, which has a coldest temperature of 10 to 15 degrees below zero.”

Read more: Time

“Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil — up to two years after treated seed was planted — on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

“We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees,” said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings.

The United States is losing about one-third of its honeybee hives each year, according to Greg Hunt, a Purdue professor of behavioral genetics, honeybee specialist and co-author of the findings. Hunt said no one factor is to blame, though scientists believe that others such as mites and insecticides are all working against the bees, which are important for pollinating food crops and wild plants.

“It’s like death by a thousand cuts for these bees,” Hunt said.Krupke and Hunt received reports that bee deaths in 2010 and 2011 were occurring at planting time in hives near agricultural fields. Toxicological screenings performed by Brian Eitzer, a co-author of the study from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, for an array of pesticides showed that the neonicotinoids used to treat corn and soybean seed were present in each sample of affected bees. Krupke said other bees at those hives exhibited tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of insecticide poisoning.

Seeds of most annual crops are coated in neonicotinoid insecticides for protection after planting.”

Science Daily